Excerpts
After all, though our yesterdays may be different, we all share the same tomorrow.
14 words
The poet mopped the floor with us. The poet opened up like a cornered sky and fell on us. The poet felled us. The lights flickered. No drinks were ordered. Nobody rose for the pisser. The poet, a warned-about force, put everything internal up for sale--for free on the front porch of their voice--and we carried all that we could handle home.
62 words
But what I'm beginning to realize is that I don't need to find myself. I've been here all along.
19 words
The Conundrum of Three. It's the mind seeking the memory of a body long gone, and the body withdrawing from the mind and the spirit, and the spirit chasing the echo of the other two.
35 words
Language doesn't work to manipulate people into believing things they don't want to believe; instead, it gives them license to believe ideas they're already open to. Language reshapes a person's reality only if they are in an ideological place where that reshaping is welcome.
44 words
For me, it's the mourning--not the performance of grief, but the verb that works through a person, the verb that is rendered by a person, their hands, their heart.
29 words
For me, it's the mourning--not the performance of grief, but the verb that works through a person, the verb that is rendered by a person, their hands, their heart.
29 words
Don't tell me I'm undocumented when my name is tattooed on my father's arm.
14 words
We are the testaments to the fact that gates can rust & not break. / Valleys can yield good earth following avalanches. / Kisses can be reclaimed for ourselves. / Hollowed-out hearts can be refilled, remade, renewed.
33 words
I'm just a clumsy child / picking roses & limes / & I've forgotten wholeness-- / the glory & the god & / now a grown woman / whose feathers don't fly, / wings clipped, third eye / with dark glasses. / But look up dear one, / the sky is soft / & any bird can launch / from the nearest tree.
47 words
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
27 words
The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow their soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.
Функциональная же предназначенность искусства не в том, как это часто полагают, чтобы внушать мысли, заражать идеями, служить примером. Цель искусства заключается в том, чтобы подготовить человека к смерти, вспахать и взрыхлить его душу, сделать ее способной обратиться к добру.
46 words
If a guy brought an elephant through that door and one of us said, "That is an elephant," some of the doubters would say, "You know, that is an inference. That could be a mouse with a glandular condition."
39 words
What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.
46 words
I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.
33 words
[W]e have come not only to enjoy the benefits of America but to contribute to its development, growth and welfare. We have come to contribute to the achievement of what is left undone or unfinished in the agenda of American democracy. We have come to contribute to that perfect union.
51 words
"[H]istorical research does not endeavor to grasp the concrete phenomenon as an instance of a universal rule. (...) Its ideal is rather to understand the phenomenon itself in its unique and historical concreteness... to understand how this man, this people, or this state is what it has become."
48 words
Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish these natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children.
28 words
What has been cast aside but not absorbed theoretically will often yield its truth content only later. It festers as a sore on the prevailing health; this will lead back to it in changed situations.
35 words
There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even Peace.
20 words
For the disciplined man, as for the true believer, no detail is unimportant, but not so much for the meaning that it conceals within it as for the hold it provides for the power that wishes to seize it.
39 words
The language of truth is unvarnished enough.
7 words
I don't believe that the question of “who exercises power?” can be resolved unless that other question “how does it happen?” is resolved at the same time.
27 words
Those stern and unforgiving teachers were the toughest and were the ones from whom I probably learned the most. Some teachers are places, are oceans and mountains. Some are insects crawling the earth or flying. I am still learning. It is never ending, this inner search for knowledge.
48 words
We were never perfect. / Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was once a star and made the same mistakes as humans. / We might make them again, she said. / Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end. / You must make your own map.
53 words
Everyone is a teacher. You are a teacher to someone else. These are my teachers: these poems and songs, these poets and musicians, these relatives and those who stand against as enemies to test. These are my teachers: these healers, these healed and broken. I have stood and I have fallen in this story field. ...The best teachers are exacting. There is no end to learning.
66 words
Policymakers and media observers have raced to keep up with events, they have largely missed the deeper causes of this new age of unrest-the end of the age of cheap fossil fuels, and its multiplying consequences for economic growth, industrial food production, and the Earth's climate stability.
47 words
It is now objectively the case that our national interests are increasingly affected not just by what happens between states - but also what happens to people in states.
29 words
There's no life that couldn't be immortal if only for a moment. Death always arrives by that very moment too late. In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door. As far as you've come can't be undone.
40 words
The feeling for words comes at an early age--or rather it is lost in most cases at any early age, leaving the rest poets.
24 words
If you talk with the animals, they will talk with you, and you will know each other. If you don't talk with them, you will not know them, and what you do not know, you fear. What one fears, one destroys.
41 words
Goodbye, said the fox. Here is my secret. It is very simple. One can only see well with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye. What is essential is invisible to the eye, repeated the little prince, in order to remember.
Adieu, dit le renard. Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. -L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux, répéta le petit prince, afin de se souvenir.
44 words
At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough, and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.
53 words
Life is calling. It will be heartbreaking and hopeful. It will be bruised and beautiful. Give in to it. You're ready for whatever comes your way.
26 words
“You do not know me,' said Tortoise. 'I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.”
28 words
The secret to doing anything is believing that you can do it. Anything that you believe you can do strong enough, you can do. Anything. As long as you believe.
30 words
Words can be said to be the very source of our being... Spirit, the human soul, our self-awareness, our ability to generalize and think in concepts, to perceive the world as the world (and not just as our locality), and lastly, our capacity for knowing that we will die-and living in spite of that knowledge: surely all these are mediated or actually created by words?
65 words
We exist temporarily through what we take, but live forever through what we give.
14 words
The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress.
55 words
If I am not for myself, who is for me? / If I am only for myself, what am I? / And if not now, when?
הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי:
24 words
Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.
30 words
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace / And the norms and notions / of what just is / Isn't always justice / And yet the dawn is ours.
25 words
The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.
16 words
The arts and humanities not only help us see and understand the world around us, they also--through a critical lens--envision the world as it could be. We must take every opportunity to shift the conversation to broader narratives and to consider hope for our future. We need to engage in more open conversations about a fair and equitable future that educates us all.
63 words
Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it.
36 words
Here we are all, by day; by night, we’re hurled / By dreams, each one, into a several world.
19 words
What would happen if we studied what was right with people versus what's wrong with people?
16 words
Most men and women go through their lives using no more than a fraction - usually a rather small fraction - of the potentialities within them. The reservoir of unused human talent and energy is vast, and learning to tap that reservoir more effectively is one of the exciting tasks ahead for humankind. Among the untapped capabilities are leadership gifts.
60 words
The day we left for Tetuan, I remembered Abdelqader's grave. No one would put water on it, or sprigs of myrtle, and ... no tiles around it. His grave will be invisible among all the others. It will get lost, the way little things always disappear among the big ones.
49 words
My mother was a braid of black smoke. / She bore me swaddled over the burning cities. / The sky was a vast and windy place for a child to play. / We met many others who were just like us. / They were trying to put on their overcoats with arms made of smoke. / The high heavens were full of shrunken deaf ears instead of stars.
63 words
Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird; - Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
37 words
It doesn’t matter what you do… so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.
34 words
Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
13 words
Forgive me, comrade. … Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony–Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?
51 words
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.
27 words
It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven’t done badly. People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.
39 words
Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.
43 words
So, transform yourself first... Because you are young and have dreams and want to do something meaningful, that in itself, makes you our future and our hope. Keep expanding your horizon, decolonize your mind, and cross borders.
37 words
…I am the chief of a nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.
48 words
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit…
45 words
If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit.
52 words
Man's intellectual superiority cannot be a question until woman has had a fair trial. When shall we have had our freedom to find out our own sphere, when we shall have had our colleges, our professions, our trades, for a century, a comparison then may be justly instituted.
48 words
I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act. It is an act that can be met with hostility, exclusion, and violence. It can also lead to love, understanding, transcendence, and community.
44 words
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
38 words
I am Joaquín, lost in a world of confusion, / caught up in the whirl of a gringo / society, confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes, / suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society.
Yo soy Joaquín, / perdido en un mundo de confusión
33 words
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed.
44 words
Swear by the olive in the God-kissed land- There is no sugar in the promised land… If home is found on both sides of the globe, home is of course here-and always a missed land.
35 words
I've got to put it before them briefly so that they will read it, clearly so that they will understand it, forcibly so that they will appreciate it, picturesquely so that they will remember it, and, above all, accurately so that they may be wisely guided by its light.
49 words
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
45 words
Water, is taught by thirst. / Land - by the oceans passed. / Transport - by throe - / Peace - by its battles told - / Love, by memorial mould - / Birds, by the snow.
32 words
On the wooded coast, eating oysters / Looking off toward China and Japan / “If you’re gonna work these woods / Don’t want nothing / That can’t be left out in the rain”
32 words
I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you - Nobody - too? Then there's a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know! How dreary - to be - Somebody! How public - like a Frog - To tell one's name - the livelong June - To an admiring Bog!
51 words
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question; unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. . . .How does it feel to be a problem?
41 words
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
16 words
What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, fiction, passing shadow, and the greatest good the merest dot, for all of life's a dream, and dreams themselves are only part of dreaming.
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí. ¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión, una sombra, una ficción, y el mayor bien es pequeño; que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son.
34 words
We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life.
36 words
…the role of an indigenous researcher and indeed of other researchers committed to producing research knowledge that documents social injustice, that recovers subjugated knowledge, that helps create spaces for the voices of the silenced to be expressed and listened to and that challenges racism, colonialism and oppression is a risky business.
51 words
Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.
10 words
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Socialist. / Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Jew. / Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.
51 words
The purpose in life is to grow and share. When you come back to look on all you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought into other people’s lives than you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them.
50 words
In an age of speed, I began to think nothing could be more exhilarating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.
44 words
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
36 words
We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together-black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu-a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest [and] must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.
50 words
People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.
35 words
As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.
31 words
Leadership is behavioral, not positional: The capacity to integrate, motivate, and mobilize others to bring a common aspiration to life is what leadership is all about, not holding positions of formal authority.
32 words
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
35 words
Someone I loved once gave me / a box full of darkness. / It took me years to understand / that this, too, was a gift.
23 words
Law, order, continuity: these conditions are fundamental to freedom, variety, and novelty, and are thus the very basis of social creativeness: for freedom without law is irresponsible anarchy, variety without order is chaos, and novelty without continuity is empty distraction.
40 words
There is nothing more vulnerable than caring for someone; it means not only giving your energy to that which is not you but also caring for that which is beyond or outside your control.
34 words
Do not be discouraged by your failure. You have to overcome and learn from it for you to succeed.
失敗に落胆しなさるな。 失敗に打ち勝たねばならぬ。この経験によってもって成功を期さなければならぬのである。
19 words
The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.
34 words
Folklore is artistic communication in small groups.
7 words
Folklore is the traditional, unofficial, non-institutional part of culture. It encompasses all knowledge, understandings, values, attitudes, assumptions, feelings, and beliefs transmitted in traditional forms by word of mouth or by customary examples.
32 words
That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.
42 words
The essence of America, that which really unites us is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion. It is an idea, and what an idea it is – that you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. That it doesn’t matter where you came from but where you are going.
51 words
Freedom has never been free… I love my children and I love my wife with all my heart. And I would die, die gladly, if that would make a better life for them
33 words
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
14 words
There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.
14 words
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
9 words
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
19 words
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham…
45 words
The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life.
48 words
Bridges are thresholds to other realities…They are passageways, conduits, and connectors that connote transitioning, crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds...Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries.
42 words
I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
25 words
We are suffering. We have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to win our cause. We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women, and children have suffered… the most obvious injustices of the system...
49 words
I’ve found that there is always some beauty left - in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself… Look at these things, then you find yourself again, and God, and then you regain your balance. A person who’s happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!
55 words
Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.
44 words
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.
50 words
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It is beyond me.
30 words
We are beginning to understand that the world is always being made fresh and never finished; that activism can be the journey rather than the arrival; that’s struggle doesn’t always have to be confrontational but can take the form of reaching out to find common ground…
48 words
You all shall see what we have not seen, you all shall hear what we have not heard.
Kiwil na ri man qilom taj, Kita na ri man qatom taj.
18 words
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
12 words
This is the root of the ancient word, here...
Are vxe oher tzih varal...
9 words
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
καὶ γνώσεσθε τὴν ἀλήθειαν καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς
13 words
The best medicine for people is people.
Nit, nit mooy garabam.
7 words
Look, now I am only a man, no degradation, no spit perturbs him, now I am only a man who accepts emptied of anger (nothing left in his heart but immense love, which burns) I accept … I accept … totally, without reservation … my race
Tenez, je ne suis plus qu'un homme, aucune dégradation, aucun crachat ne le conturbe, je ne suis plus qu'un homme qui accepte, n'ayant plus de colère (il n'a plus dans le cœur que de l'amour immense, et qui brûle) J'accepte... j'accepte... entièrement, sans réserve... ma race
43 words
Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men; no treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it; for freedom, life may and should be ventured.
La libertad, Sancho, es uno de los más preciosos dones que a los hombres dieron los cielos; con ella no pueden igualarse los tesoros que encierra la tierra ni el mar encubre; por la libertad se puede y debe aventurar la vida.
38 words
Doubt is another name for intelligence.
La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia.
6 words
Travel in foreign lands and communication with various peoples is what makes men wise.
El andar tierras y comunicar con diversas gentes hace a los hombres discretos.
14 words
Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you’ve no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain!
41 words
It is indeed a pleasure to acquire knowledge and, as you go on acquiring, to put into practice what you have acquired. A greater pleasure still it is when friends of congenial minds come from afar to seek you because of your attainments. But he is truly a wise and good man who feels no discomposure even when he is not noticed of men.
学而时习之，不亦说乎？有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎？人不知而不愠，不亦君子乎？
64 words
Teaching is useful but encouragement works magic.
Lehre tut viel, aber Aufmunterung tut alles.
7 words
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.
11 words
Hope is like a path across the land — It’s not there to begin with, but when lots of people go the same way, it comes into being.
其实地上本没有路，走的人多了，也便成了路。
28 words
Sincere words are not pleasant to the ear; pleasant words are not sincere.
信言不美，美言不信。
13 words
A wise man will not make himself into a mere machine fit only to do one kind of work.
君子不器。
19 words
To know what it is that you know, and to know what it is that you do not know, that is understanding.
知之为知之，不知为不知，是知也。
22 words
No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women… When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.
46 words
As we dread parting when we meet, so, we promise to meet again when we part. Though my love is gone, i am not parted from love; an untiring love-song envelops the silence of love.
우리는 만날 때에 떠날 것을 염려하는 것과 같이 떠날 때에 다시 만날 것을 믿습니다. 아아, 님은 갔지마는 나는 님을 보내지 아니하였습니다. 제 곡조를 못 이기는 사랑의 노래는 님의 침묵을 휩싸고 돕니다.
35 words
If one day the people will to live / Fate can only but obey.
13 words
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
16 words
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight.
38 words
The function of the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present.
33 words
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
10 words
Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by their abstract word freedom. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the worker.
35 words
The capacity for deep understanding is proportional to the degree of self-knowledge, and by finding and expressing one's true self, one somehow discovers the common denominator of the universe.
29 words
Sound thinking is the greatest excellence and wisdom is saying and doing true things, perceiving things according to their nature.
σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαΐοντας.
20 words
Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.
私が、高く堅固な一つの壁とそれにぶつけられた一つの卵の間にいるときは、つねに卵の側に立つ。
22 words
In a certain reign (whose can it have been?) someone of no great rank, among all His Majesty's intimates, enjoyed exceptional favor.
いづれの御時にか、女御、更衣あまた候ひ給ひける中に、いとやむごとなき際にはあらぬが、すぐれて 時めき給ふありけり。
22 words
We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it's a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start.
67 words
Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. [...] Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
43 words
And the toy withheld is the token Of all who refrain from play– The shopkeepers, the collectors Like Queen Victoria, In whose adorable doll’s house Nothing was ever broken.
30 words
I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act. It is an act that can be met with hostility, exclusion, and violence. It can also lead to love, understanding, transcendence, and community.
44 words
The facts of history cannot be purely objective, since they become facts of history only in virtue of the significance attached to them by the historian. Objectivity in history … cannot be an objectivity of fact, but only of relation, of the relation between fact and interpretation, between past, present, and future.
51 words
I am visible - see this Indian face - yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They'd like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven't, we haven't.
46 words
I have always believed that it is the artist who creates a work, but a society that turns it into a work of art.
24 words
Art is not a luxury for any advanced civilization; it is a necessity, without which creative intelligence will wither and die. Even in economically troubled times, support for the arts should be a national imperative.
35 words
Ironically, I believe Picasso was right. I believe we could paint a better world if we learned to see it from all perspectives, as many perspectives as we possibly could. Because diversity is strength. Difference is a teacher. Fear difference, you learn nothing.
43 words
O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.
يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَاكُمْ مِنْ ذَكَرٍ وَأُنْثَىٰ وَجَعَلْنَاكُمْ شُعُوبًا وَقَبَائِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوا ۚ إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٌ
46 words
There is no distinction of rank, but there is a vast difference between studied and not studied.
人に貴賤はないが、勉強したかしないかの差は大きい。
17 words
Fiercely study and work, and a chance will come.
猛烈に勉強しなさい。そして働きなさい。チャンスは必ずやってくる。
9 words
As heaven maintains vigor through movements, a gentle man should constantly strive for self-perfection. As earth’s condition is receptive devotion, a gentle man should hold the outer world with broad mind.
天行健，君子以自强不息；地势坤，君子以厚德载物
32 words
The world is not scary if you are learning new things. It gets scary if you are not learning anything.
新しいことを勉強していると世の中は怖くありません。何もしないでじっとしているから怖くなるんです。
20 words
We study history not because in its absence there will not be any history, but rather because in its absence we shall have a corrupt history; we shall have the myths, distortions, and the ideologies that flourish in the absence of critical scholarship.
43 words
The human need for storytelling is not likely ever to go away. It is far too basic to the way people make sense of their lives-and among the most important stories they tell are those that seek to understand the past.
41 words
You wait at the bar of the restaurant for a friend, and a man, wanting to make conversation, nursing something, takes out his phone to show you a picture of his wife. You say, bridge that she is, that she is beautiful. She is, he says, beautiful and black, like you.
51 words
Most versions of “tradition” can be … shown to be radically selective. From a whole possible area of past and present … certain meanings and practices are selected for emphasis and certain other meanings and practices are neglected or excluded. Yet … this selection is presented … as “the tradition,” “the significant past.”
49 words
No person can be moral in a suitably reflective way who cannot imagine alternative viewpoints as a means of understanding and transforming the limits of his own convictions and commitments. This is an activity of moral imagination.
37 words
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
8 words
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
26 words
Some women being empowered does not prove the patriarchy is dead. It proves that some of us are lucky.
19 words
Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction.
33 words
Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
38 words
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
31 words
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
14 words
The Master said: “Yu, shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it–this is knowledge.”
子曰: "由誨汝知之乎? 知之為知, 不知為不知, 是知也.
41 words
All profound changes in consciousness ... bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives. [...] Against biology's demonstration that every single cell in a human body is replaced over seven years, the narratives of autobiography and biography flood print-capitalism's markets year by year.
48 words
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
33 words
Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
18 words
History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.
35 words
Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.
Así continuaron viviendo en una realidad escurridiza y momentáneamente capturada por las palabras, pero que había de fugarse sin remedio cuando olvidaran los valores de la letra escrita.
30 words
Each person judges well what they know and is thus a good critic of those things. For each thing in specific, someone must be educated to be a critic, and to be a critic in general one must be educated about everything.
42 words
Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box.
30 words
...if we become free, India is free. And in this thought you have a definition of Swaraj. It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. It is, therefore, in the palm of our hands. ... But such Swaraj has to be experienced, by each one for himself.
47 words